Kathleen Cleaver

Kathleen Cleaver is an American law professor. Born in Dallas, she spent part of her childhood abroad before returning to the United States, and she graduated with honors from George School in 1963. She attended Oberlin College and Barnard College, then earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from Yale University in 1984, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1989. She worked for the law firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore and clerked for Judge A. Leon Higginbotham on the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. She later taught at Emory University, the Cardozo School of Law, Sarah Lawrence College, and Yale University, where she was a senior lecturer in African American Studies and a senior research associate at the law school. She retired in 2020 and published a memoir, Memories of Love and War, in 2022.